Five Years of Slick Gaming!

Time moves fast, doesn’t it?

To put it into perspective, I went into this article thinking it was going to be a four year anniversary, but in fact it’s been five years since I started this blog! Five whole years! In terms of major gaming news alone, Slick Gaming has seen the end of the seventh generation of consoles, gotten half-way through the eighth generation, saw the 3DS rise to power from it’s humble beginnings, and is officially older than Minecraft!

And as strange as this is to say… Slick Gaming is ending.

Well… not really!

I’m happy to announce that I’ve officially found hosting and a true domain for my blog, and am no longer using WordPress.com for my content!

I know it won’t have the blogroll and backing of this site, but I implore you all to continue to follow my adventures on my new official site:

www.DownStab.com

Here you’ll find every post from this SlickGaming site, and then some! If you were wondering why I’ve been quiet on here, it’s because I’ve been focusing on creating content over there! Just like this blog, it’s a work in progress, and I’m enjoying finding what the site and theme can do, and how I can use them in new, creative, and different ways!

While this is the end for SlickGaming, it isn’t the end of Jason! I’ll keep on writing, I’ll keep on making videos, I’ll definitely keep on collecting games, and I’ll for sure be enjoying games for a long time to come!

To all the friends I’ve made while working here, I ask that you still follow me at DownStab! I’ll still hang around here to read your content, and I love chatting with all of you! But if you want to hear more from me, check out the new site!

And who knows, maybe I’ll still post some good stuff on here, just for kicks! Thanks guys, you’ve all been great!

Laters,
Jsick

 

Sunday Roundup: 6/5/16

It has been a busy couple of weeks! The end of May I went back home to watch my brother get married! It was amazing, of course, and it was the first time I was back home in Indiana in almost two years! The weekend immediately after was Fanime, an anime convention here in California that we’ve gone to for the past few years. We dressed up, we bought stuff, and we had a good time. Following that we had a friend move in with us until he can find a place of his own, and now Laura’s sister is back home for a couple weeks before her job starts! Phew! Thankfully though, a visit home means a ton of new video games I can’t get here in California! Let’s break it down!

 

The Subtle Differences in Bravely Second

It’s been out for a few weeks now, and though I haven’t been enjoying it right off the bat as much as I did the first game, Square Enix’s Bravely Second has been an entertaining RPG. There wasn’t anything the game needed to change in order for it to be another solid turn-based game, but the developers still added some extra stuff into that mix. Some stuff are welcome additions, and others are things I didn’t know I wanted or needed! If you’ve somehow never played either game and own a 3DS (shame on you!) then here are some changes you can look forward too when you pick it up and start one of the best RPGs on the 3DS!

 

Blizzard’s Overwatch is Looking to Fill the Team Based Shooting Gap in My Life

The open beta is over. Hopefully you were able to get in some quality time with Blizzard’s first person shooter/squad based action game Overwatch, coming out May 24th for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. At first glance the game seems kind of like any other team based shooter, but once you get your hands on it and play around with the different characters and classes it becomes much more than a first person shooter. I had marginal interest in the game before the beta, misjudging it as another MOBA-esque game I wouldn’t care about, but after playing the beta almost nonstop the last couple of days I don’t know if I’ll anticipate a game more in 2016 than Overwatch!

 

May the Force Be With You in Video Games

May the Force Be With You.

On this fourth of May, 2016, the fan-dubbed Star Wars day had me thinking all things Jedi and lightsabers. I’d venture to guess most gamers have likely seen all of the movies and know a think or two about the Force and what have you. The blending of interest between the sci-fi film genre and video games makes a lot of sense, so I’d also guess a lot of gamers who’ve seen the films may have dabbled in a few Star Wars video games as well. When discussing with a coworker today I discovered I’ve actually played a good amount of Star Wars video games! More than I had actually thought, actually! And you probably have too! I started thinking about all the games I’ve played in the Star Wars universe, and decided to reminiscence with you all! Here are my favorite Star Wars video games from decades past!

 

I’m Simultaneously Happy and Frustrated with Star Fox Zero

Created as a weird sequel/prequel/remake for the Nintendo 64 classic Star Fox 64, this new adventure with the Star Fox team is familiar is a lot of ways. It’s the same crew, same premise, and largely the same type of gameplay. But then again it’s none of those things, with different characters, an altered plot, and such a variety of gameplay resembling anything but a Star Fox game. While I still had fun with the game, it certainly wasn’t the next space dogfight simulator I was expecting from Nintendo.

 

Sunday Roundup: 4/24/16

A visit to Los Angeles for family and friends is great, and being able to hit up a couple used game shops along the way is even better! I haven’t been to LA in six years, so it was nice to get back there and see that some places were still the same, but others were totally revamped! Par for the course for a major city I suppose. Anyway, after a visit to a shop that wasn’t all too thrilling, my brother and I hit up a place that was literally, and I mean this in ever sense of the phrase, packed floor to ceiling with games from every console. It was a little piece of heaven that I can’t seem to find in my neck of the woods. Anyway, let’s get to it!

 

Top Ten Series that Need amiibo

Something I’ve touched on surprisingly only a small bit are Nintendo’s NFC amiibo figures. To put into perspective how I feel about amiibo, let’s just say I have had friends shop around for me to get the more expensive ones back when amiibo were the hottest toys this side of Furby and Tickle Me Elmo. Out of all the toys-to-life options out there, I feel like Nintendo’s offerings are the coolest, if only because I (like many others) grew up with a lot of these characters. Also, while I love me some Skylanders, I think amiibo have a wider function in games, making them more of an investment than essentially an extra life or character in Skylanders and Disney Infinity. That being said, and in typical Nintendo fashion, there are more than a handful of series’ deserving of the amiibo treatment that haven’t seen the light of day. Though most of these will never happen, we can dream, and I can wish for some of these games to come out sooner rather than later!

 

Sunday Roundup: 4/10/16

Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi 3DS Release Date: September 19th, 2013 Purchased at: GameStop (Sunnyvale, CA – $18) Releasing a few years back, Hakuoki is as random a JRPG one can get on the 3DS. I decided to pick up this one for a couple reasons: I needed a game to fit into a Buy 2 Get 1 Free category to maximize the potential of the free game, and two it was released awhile ago and I likely won’t see too many more of it out there. The game isn’t particularly rare, and you can still find it on sites like Amazon, but it might be a game to keep in your collection. If for nothing else, it’s supposed to be a pretty decent strategy game.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Wii U Release Date: November 18th, 2012 Purchased at: GameStop (Sunnyvale, CA – $18) Way back in 2012 I reviewed this game for the 3DS and was impressed by its variety in levels, characters, and quality of the racing in general. I have heard good things from a lot of people about this Wii U version (which also happens to be a console launch title!), with some people going so far as to say it’s a superior game to Mario Kart. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I’m all for games I can play with my friends on the couch! Unfortunately though this might just be a two player co-op game. Can anyone shed some extra light on this for me?

Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition PlayStation 4 Release Date: October 27th, 2015 Purchased at: GameStop (Sunnyvale, CA – Free) The original Darksiders happened to be one of the very first games I ever reviewed for the now defunct Inside Gaming blog of the Machinima network. I thought it was pretty great back then, but not great enough to pickup the sequel until this “Deathinitive” re-release. Granted, I have had the game on Xbox 360 for awhile now, but this is in HD! Following Death as he fights in the war between the Angels and Demons, Darksiders II takes what made the first game memorable (the Legend of Zelda-esque exploration and gameplay) and makes it all better and pretty on the PS4!

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Wii Release Date: March 24th, 2009 Purchased at: GameStop (Cupertino, CA – $2) A port of an old point-and-click adventure game released on the PC way back in 1996, Broken Sword has gone down as one of the more influential games of the genre. Despite this, and the countless systems this game has come out for, I feel like the game has still gone unplayed by a lot of gamers, myself included! The game is a story driven adventure centering around the Knights Templar, a terrorist attack in Paris, France, and the mysteries around those involved. It’s interesting, don’t get me wrong, but I almost feel taken aback by how old the game is I don’t want to even try it. But we’ll see; maybe I’ll be surprised by it one day!

Laters,
Jsick

 

Fallout 4’s Automatron DLC is a Good Investment for Fallout 4 Fans

The first batch of Bethesda’s open-world post-apocalyptic garbage collection simulator otherwise known as Fallout 4 is finally out. Automatron is all about robots and a bad buy known as the Mechanist who is terrorizing the Commonwealth more than the Vault Dweller you’re playing. There’s a lot of nifty little morsels of content to chew on, and seeing as this is just the first, supposedly small’ish, piece of DLC for Fallout 4, I’m hopeful the rest of the upcoming content will be just as fun and expanding as Automatron!